There are about 500 miles between "someone is talking about making a movie" and that movie ended up in theaters. So that Rudi Dolezal told Page Six that he thinks we're going to get a sequel to Bohemian Rhapsody means about as much all the times when someone somewhere discussed sequels for Dredd or MacGruber. Rami Malek, who just won a Best Actor Oscar for playing Freddie Mercury, hasn't heard about it, nor has a rep for Queen's record label. So, this talk of a sequel that takes place after the Live Aid" concert is probably just "What if?" chitter-chatter. That being said, the idea of Bohemian Rhapsody getting a sequel is both utterly absurd and almost plausible.

Here's the thing: On one hand the Freddie Mercury biopic, which won four Oscars last month, is the very definition of a true-life melodrama that doesn't get a sequel. It's a biopic that is a near-cradle-to-grave story of its key historical figure, and that figure is indeed deceased by the time the credits roll. Save for goofy riffs like Crank: High Voltage, movies where the lead protagonist dies at the end don't tend to spawn continuations. We never did get that alleged sequel to Gladiator and, nearly 19 years after the first film, that ship has almost certainly sailed. But here's the other variable: Movies that make as much money as Bohemian Rhapsody did either tend to be sequels or prequels or tend to spawn sequels or prequels.

Bohemian Rhapsody earned $215 million domestic from a $51m debut weekend, making it the biggest-grossing musical biopic of all time (ahead of Straight Outta Compton) and the biggest-grossing LGBTQIA movie (ahead of The Birdcage) in unadjusted domestic earnings. But the real madness took place overseas, where the $52m-budgeted Bryan Singer-directed (with a little help from Dexter Fletcher) musical melodrama earned a jaw-dropping $660.5m in overseas box office alone. That's not even counting what it may or may not earn in China when it opens in an edited cut a week from Friday. Yes, China may be big enough to push the film over $900m worldwide.

With $875 million worldwide as of today, it is already the biggest-grossing straight-up (no action, no disaster peril, no fantasy) drama of all time. Its $660.5m overseas cume makes it (sans inflation or exchange rates) the 36th-biggest overseas grosser of all time, If, and this is a big "if," it performs like Once Upon A Deadpool in China and boosts its overseas cume to $685m, that will A) push it past $900m worldwide. It will also push the overseas gross past the $682m of Zootopia to become the ninth-biggest non-sequel/prequel of all time. It's currently already in tenth place, behind only Zootopia ($683m), The Wandering Earth ($687m), Alice In Wonderland ($692m), Beauty and the Beast ($760m), Aquaman ($810m) Frozen ($875m), The Avengers ($895m), Titanic ($1.528 billion, counting reissues)and Avatar ($2.027b).

You can debate where Alice in Wonderland (technically a live-action sequel to the original Alice in Wonderland book and Walt Disney animated adaptation) or The Avengers (technically a sequel to the first five MCU movies) count as a "non-sequel," but that just makes Bohemian Rhapsody even more impressive. The Wandering Earth will presumably get a follow-up of some kind and we'll see if we ever actually get Zootopia 2, but it would be very unusual for an "original" film to make as much overseas (or worldwide for that matter, as an $881m-plus cume will make it the 14th-biggest, counting Captain Marvel, non-sequel/prequel global earner of all time) as Bohemian Rhapsody did and not inspire a theatrical follow-up.

Granted, we'll see how often Disney chooses to sequalize their live-action fairy tale remakes, as Jungle Book 2 is in development and we'll see what becomes of Beauty and the Beast and (presumably) The Lion King, but the general point still stands. Absent live-action remakes of animated movies, films within an existing DCEU or MCU universe, Bohemian Rhapsody is the sixth-biggest original of all time in overseas grosses, behind only Zootopia,Wandering Earth, Frozen, Titanic and Avatar. So, love it or hate it, the Queen rock opera is ridiculously successful by the standards of any movie, let alone one that is a non-fantastical character study aimed at adults and centered on a bisexual celebrity. In that sense, not getting some continuation would almost qualify as a surprise.

Movies that do as well as this one did generally get sequels, especially in our IP and nostalgia-driven age. And with most audiences sadly avoiding Fox's deluge of critic-approved grown-up fare (Widows, Bad Times at the El Royale, etc.), Disney might want another round of Fox's biggest non-James Cameron/non-Star Wars/non-Ice Age grosser of all time. Since most audiences rather like the movie for many of the same reasons that critics and pundits hated it, it's not like anyone has to worry about soiling the memory of the first movie. Even if it pulls an Alice Through the Looking Glass (-71% worldwide from its predecessor), that's still a good-enough $261m worldwide cume on what presumably would be an over/under $60m budget.

No, that doesn't mean I think we're going to actually get an Eddie and the Cruisers 2: Eddie Lives variation on Bohemian Rhapsody, but it does mean that idle chatter isn't as ridiculous as it sounds. Maybe this time they can let Dexter Fletcher direct the whole thing and get official credit for his troubles.